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Pancreatic Cancer Group: Introduce yourself and connect with others
Pancreatic Cancer | Last Active: 2 days ago | Replies (1293)Comment receiving replies
Hi mm,
I ask about paxlovid because you say it took 4 weeks before next treatment. I got covid in January and took paxlovid and was off chemo for the required 10 days even though I was well after about 5 days. However, I am currently on the 3:1 ratio of chemo (3 wks on and 1 wk off). I protested to come in after 5 days since at Hoag (I hadn’t made the change to chemo at UCLA yet) you have private rooms and I felt I wouldn’t be a threat to anyone else as far as covid being a contagious disease, but was denied. By my next treatment I was already accepted into the UCLA chemo. My long point is I know being off chemo especially since I’m at the very early stages of getting it and it hadn’t had time to build up in my body yet, that my cancer areas could grow. I thought maybe it took you 4 weeks because you were making a long recovery without paxlovid. I’m sure your numbers will go back down once you continue chemo.
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I get chemo every other Friday, which lines up perfectly with my 9/80 work schedule (every other Friday off) .
I started feeling sick (Covid) on my off Friday, tested positive the next day. Started the Paxlovid on Sunday, last dose on Thursday. They didn't think one day clearance was enough to avoid interaction with the chemo drugs, but were also going with the old/conservative 5-days-after-symptoms guideline before seeing me again.
I was actually happy to have the break, having gone 27 treatments in a row with no breaks or absences, since I had a short vacation scheduled the following weekend -- it left me with extra energy on the trip. Plus, re-synchronizing with my work schedule would have been a pain.
In hindsight, considering my first recurrence grew from nothing to 1.3 cm in less than 3 months without adjuvant chemo, it's no big surprise the original tumor and its metastatic children resumed growth so quickly after missing one treatment. I was hoping they could stay in their dormant state for that short of a period, but it was not to be. This thing is aggressive.
Now that I'm back on the full-strength chemo, we'll see if the tumors and CA19-9 respond as they did before, or if drug resistance is now in play. The scary part is that for the trial I'm hoping to get into, they require a 30-day washout period before beginning the new treatment, and we now know my cancer will take advantage of any break it can find. 🙁
If there's a bright side to it... it may be that I could possibly have been denied a chance to participate in the trial if my disease appeared stable on the GAC. These events may improve my chance of getting in. Fingers still crossed, and expecting more news next week.